This is a drop off from last week’s show that averaged 2.99 million viewers. RAW came in at No. 2, No. 3 and No. 5 for the night on cable. “Love & Hip Hop Atlanta 6” on VH1 once again won the night on cable for Monday night.

It also officially marks the lowest audience for RAW so far in 2017 and even slightly less than what the show drew two weeks ago during the Memorial Day holiday. While the WWE did face big competition from the NBA Finals, it was clear the audience had no interest in continuing with the show beyond the first hour that featured the return of WWE Universal Champion Brock Lesnar, with all hours declining for the final two.

Hourly breakdowns were as follows.

Hourly breakdowns of the WWE RAW Ratings

Hour 1: 2.769 (down from 3.113 million viewers last week)

Hour 2: 2.522 (down from 3.110 million viewers)

Hour 3: 2.335 (down from 2.758 million viewers)

RAW, headlined by Sheamus and Cesaro vs. The Hardy Boyz for the WWE RAW Tag Team Championships in a 2 out of 3 Falls match, averaged a 0.86 rating. This is a drop from last week’s show that averaged a 1.04 rating.

15 COMMENTS

No, certainly not the way they have been booked thus far. I think many saw the writing on the wall given how poorly WWE seems to handle anything that achieved success outside of their universe. Of course, The Hardy’s were big many times in their initial run with WWE and WWE gave them a brand name in the first place BUT The Hardy’s were one of the few talents to enjoy a high level of success outside of WWE with new characters. (I realize Cody, AJ, and more had great success on the indies BUT I’m meaning with a new character). Now that WWE has no desire to try to at least capitalize on the BROKEN brand, it’s no surprise to me that the Hardy’s are getting lost in their return. I mentioned here before that the Hardy’s were MASSIVE at Wrestlecon and other events on WM weekend this year (bigger than everyone – their lines matched the Access lines and they didn’t have the WWE Machine promoting them) and a lot of it had to do with their Broken characters and now, WWE seems to have little interest in those characters (even if they had to pay Impact a small fee for the rights) or creating compelling storylines / characters for the Hardy’s and voila, within no time, The Hardy’s are just show filler…sad!

They will never acknowledge anything TNA (Impact) related, and if they did, Vince/HHH/Stephanie would probably try to pass it off as their own. They got a huge reaction when they showed up in ROH that one night as well. But in WWE, they are stale.

Do keep in mind the broken gimmicks are stuck in Trademark Limbo/litigation and wwe cant touch it at this time. Also even if they do go into the broken gimmick how do you explain to wwe fans (a large portion of which dont follow anything other then wwe) what exactly is going on with Matt. Overall though i am happy with how the hardy’s are moving as they got to recapture the tag team titles, put over sheamus and cesaro and still maintain their strength.

They actually can touch them – if you saw the recent post on here regarding Ed (Impact) he reached out to WWE to try to work out an easy agreement for the use of the gimmick and WWE replied back, we have no interest. Not saying they should have interest, or pay, but per the emails he shared they didn’t even pursue what the arrangement could have been (I.e. Could have been as small as lending a WWE talent for a small event).

I also understand that the casual fan doesn’t know about the Broken stuff but I was at WM and have been watching Raw’s – the vocal fans could make the gimmick work while the casual fan catches up but bottom line, WWE rarely has interest in anything they haven’t created even if their customers (fans) are cheering for it at every show like many were with the delete phrase.

It’s a moot point, non-conversation starter, anyway since WWE isn’t interested and the result, in my opinion, is the creative work the Hardy’s did recently (even Edge and Christian on their podcast noted how impressive their creativity was in recreating themselves – and given Edge and Matt’s history him saying it should speak volumes) in reinventing themselves is basically wasted and their amazing return and title win at Mania will ultimately be overshadowed by their poor use by WWE creative – again in my opinion. I don’t mind them putting over the talented Cesaro / Sheamus but that would be a bigger deal if WWE booked The Hardy’s properly in the first place instead of (as seen recently) squashing their audience reactions with poor booking decisions!

wwe cant touch them because they are in dispute and it would leave themselves open to repercussions at a later date. Also agreeing something with Anthem would help legitimize their claim which Im sure wwe doesnt want to do either.

The show is just boring, and it has been for a long time now. Nothing exciting is happening. Poor storylines (or just a LACK of storylines really), and uninteresting characters. Actually… everything Vince Russo has been saying about the product lately, I can’t argue with him at all.

Roster of RAW sucks, never been so bad all good wrestlers are in Smackdown, beside those few names in RAW, that why RAW ratings will continue go down and Smackdown up, I personal watch RAW only because Seth Rollins, Brock Lesnar(who never here) and Samoa Joe like lately all else i really didnt care about and those 3 even not like much so my interest in RAW keep going down too